3D Systems has been ranked at 4th place on a Forbes list of America's 25 fastest growing tech companies, which has been topped by career-oriented networking portal LinkedIn Corp. (NYSE:LNKD)

LinkedIn topped the list with 102 percent growth in average sales over the past three years and 51 percent growth in three-to-five-year estimated earnings per share, or EPS.

Social networking giant Facebook (Nasdaq:FB) was ranked second, followed by Apple (Nasdaq:AAPL) at the third place.

3D Systems came in fourth - "3D Systems: Printing 3-D objects from scratch is one of the hottest growth ideas in tech, and 3D Systems is a top seller of the machines. Its home version is called the Cube ($1,299)." describes Forbes.

3D Systems had an average 46 percent growth in sales for the past three years and 30 percent growth in estimated EPS.

"The list is a pretty good leading indicator of market outperformance", says Forbes in the story.

Each year Forbes combs 25 fastest-growing technology companies from more than 5,000 publicly traded technology companies. Only profitable companies with a minimum revenue of $150 million and a minimum market value of $500 million can be included in the list. Further Forbes looked for firms with sales growth of at least 10% for each of the past three fiscal years and over the latest 12 months. Forbes also required companies to have three-to-five-year estimated earnings-per-share growth rates greater than 10%. Finally they ranked companies based on their three-year average sales growth rates in descending order.